What is a YES, NO or INDETERMINATE location verdict?

Last reviewed 20 October 2026

A location verdict is the answer to a question such as “is this device in New Jersey?”: YES and NO each come with a signed proof, and INDETERMINATE means the device could not answer, with a reason, so “not there” and “could not tell” are never confused.

Why not just yes or no

A plain true-or-false collapses two different outcomes: the device was not in the region, and the device could not tell. Treating the second as the first rejects genuine users. Treating it as a pass lets through the cases a check exists to stop.

The three values

• YES: the condition holds. A signed proof is attached.
• NO: the condition does not hold. A signed proof of the negative is attached. NO does not mean “I don’t know.”
• INDETERMINATE: the device cannot answer. There is no proof, and a reason code says why.

Reasons fall into three kinds

• Adversarial: something looks forged or compromised, such as SPOOFING_DETECTED, MOCK_LOCATION_DETECTED, TAMPERING or ATTESTATION_FAILED. Deny.
• Benign: the device could not measure well enough, such as NO_FIX, INSUFFICIENT_PRECISION or REGION_UNRESOLVED. Ask the user to try again, or step up another way.
• The call itself: the app asked wrongly or too early, such as SDK_NOT_RUNNING. Fix the calling code rather than asking the user to do anything.

The full list is in the verdicts documentation.

A check with only two answers has to report some “cannot tell” cases as yes or no.

Using it well

• Treat a NO as a result. Do not retry it in the hope of a YES.
• Show the user what to fix for benign reasons, not a generic “you are not eligible.”
• Report the rate of each value separately. See geolocation pass rate.